2025 Bengals look a lot like the 2024 Bengals: Here’s the good, bad and ugly from preseason loss to Eagles

The 2024 season was a roller coaster ride for the Cincinnati Bengals. Last year, every game seemed to play out the same way: The offense would score a boatload of points and then everyone would hold on for dear life and hope the defense could hold the lead. 

The Bengals first preseason game of 2025 felt a lot like every game they played in 2024: The offense was great, the defense wasn’t and the special teams fell somewhere in between. 

Let’s take a look at the good, the bad and they ugly from the Bengals’ 34-27 loss to the Eagles. 

The good: The first-team offense rolled

Going into Thursday’s game, Joe Burrow had only thrown eight preseason passes in his ENTIRE career, and he beat that number in Philadelphia. Burrow was on the field because Bengals coach Zac Taylor decided to give his starters some rare preseason playing time this year. Since Burrow took over as the starting QB, the Bengals are 1-9 in the first two weeks of the season, so Taylor is likely hoping to avoid another slow start, and if that’s the plan, then the plan looks like it just might work. 

Burrow and the first-team offense only played for one quarter, but they were nearly perfect during their time on the field. After throwing an incompletion with his first pass, Burrow rebounded to complete nine straight passes for123 yards and two touchdowns to end his playing time. 

Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase started 2025 right where they left off in 2024, with some huge plays that not many other QB-WR tandems in the NFL can pull off. You want a 23-yard gain on the sideline? They had that. 

How about a 38-yard TD pass on a play where Burrow was being blitzed? Yup, they had that too.  

None of us were alive to see Da Vinci paint, but we do get to watch Burrow-to-Chase, which is as close as we’re ever going to get. Chase caught four passes for 77 yards and a touchdown on just two possessions. Burrow hit four different receivers with his nine completions, including a 12-yard touchdown pass to Tanner Hudson. 

Chase Brown was also impressive, averaging 4.6 yards on five carries. Although the offense was good, the Eagles didn’t play their defensive starters, so the offensive line still hasn’t been tested. 

The Bengals are working in two new guards and there’s a good chance that Lucas Patrick (RG) and rookie Dylan Fairchild (LG) will end up winning the jobs. There’s a big difference between facing the Eagles’ second team and going up against a Browns defense that includes Myles Garrett, which is who the Bengals will be facing in Week 1. 

Basically, the Bengals should be thrilled with how the offense played, but it should be tempered enthusiasm for now. As long as Burrow is healthy, the offense is definitely going to be good, but the play of the guards will go a long way to determining just how great this unit can be. The Bengals had the sixth-highest scoring offense in the NFL last season and the scary thing for other NFL teams is that they might be even better this year. 

The bad: The defense got torched by Philadelphia’s second-team offense

With Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley and the rest of the Eagles’ offensive starters on the bench, this seemed like a prime opportunity for the Bengals defense to make a statement, but instead, they made Tanner McKee look like Patrick Mahomes. The Bengals’ first-team defense was on the field for two possessions and during that time, McKee went 5 of 5 for 73 yards. 

Although the defense struggled, Taylor wasn’t worried about their overall performance. The Bengals generally go with a mostly vanilla defensive look in the preseason, so what Taylor wants to see is his guys winning their one-on-one battles, which wasn’t happening as often as he would have liked. 

“Defense, we’re trying not to show a lot of what was going on, so we’re trying to keep it as a little as possible and let some guys win one-on-ones,” Taylor said after the game. “And today, there was a lot of 50-50 plays that I thought Philly made.”

If Trey Hendrickson’s agent is looking for some negotiation leverage in his next meeting with the Bengals, he could probably just pop in the tape from the first quarter of this game. It’s pretty clear that the defense needs Hendrickson. 

One bright spot for the Bengals was Shemar Stewart, who finished with one tackle for a loss to go along with several pressures. 

Although the defense struggled, it’s definitely not panic time in Cincinnati. The preseason is all about improvement: You identify your mistakes and figure out how to fix them. New Bengals defensive coordinator Al Golden still has almost a month before the games start counting and when the games do start counting, he’ll likely have several players that he didn’t have on Thursday like Hendrickson and defensive tackle BJ Hill, along with cornerbacks Cam Taylor-Britt and Dax Hill. 

The Bengals defense is still a work in progress, but if they don’t start progressing more quickly, 2025 could turn into a replay of 2024. 

The ugly (with one bright spot): A not so special performance from the special teams

If Zac Taylor seemed annoyed by anything after this loss, it was all the special teams mistakes that his team made. Let’s take a look at the biggest mistakes: 

The first big mistake came in the second quarter when a 71-yard kickoff return by Gary Brightwell got called back due to holding on Cam Grandy. Ouch. With roughly one minute to go before halftime, the punt coverage team gave up a 46-yard return to Ainias Smith that set up a 29-yard touchdown drive for Philly. That TD made the score 24-14 at the half. In the third quarter, Eagles kicker Jake Elliott missed a 47-yard field goal, but he got a free do-over after D.J. Ivey got flagged for being offsides. Elliott went on to make the 42-yarder, so the penalty cost the Bengals three points. In the fourth quarter, Elliott hit a 23-yard field goal on fourth-and-goal, but the Eagles ended up getting a first down on the play after McKinnley Jackson got flagged for unnecessary roughness. The Eagles went on to score a TD one play later. 

The one bright spot was Evan McPherson, who drilled two field goals, including a 51-yarder. The good news for the Bengals is that three of the four mistakes were cause by penalties and penalties are usually pretty easy to clean up. 

The Bengals offense looks ready for Week 1, and now, they just need the defense and special teams to catch up.